People were generally less distracted before their portable gadgets. When I was in grad school, it was at a time when iPods were just coming out and everyone had earbuds in their ears walking to class--even more than the folks who had headphones with walkmans back in their day. You lose a lot of the experience of just being outside walking and also of the experience of silence, which is important for mental processing and creativity. Doubtless, I will probably be called a fogey. Oh well.

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Quote from: GabrieltheCelt

If you spend long enough on this forum, you'll come away with all sorts of weird, untrue ideas of Orthodox Christianity.

Quote from: orthonorm

I would suggest most persons in general avoid any question beginning with why.

Here in Seattle women often hit on my husband when he is out with our kids. I've seen this while we have been out and about over the last 12 years. He has a head full of gray hair, but apparently some women find daddies hot. The other day he took 4 of the kids to the grocery store (the youngest 2 stayed with me at home). The 20-something woman started to flirt with my husband in the produce aisle, she was making eyes etc. in his general direction. He pulled out his ANCIENT motorola razr to check for messages and kinda ignore her. She saw his phone and immediately stopped the flirty behavior. Apparently cell phones are the new status symbol for some women. My 40 year old husband was highly amused that his cell phone is a flirty 20 something-female repellent.

I have no idea why, but women in this area LOVE to flirt with men that have children in tow. I have seen it over and over in the almost 2 decades we have lived here. It isn't just my husband either. Although, I must say he is very, very attractive

Here in Seattle women often hit on my husband when he is out with our kids. The other day he took 4 of the kids to the grocery store (the youngest 2 stayed with me at home). The 20-something woman started to flirt with my husband in the produce aisle, she was making eyes etc. in his general direction. He pulled out his ANCIENT motorola razr to check for messages and kinda ignore her. She saw his phone and immediately stopped the flirty behavior. Apparently cell phones are the new status symbol for some women. My 40 year old husband was highly amused that his cell phone is a flirty 20 something-female repellent.

If we can lift the "vulgar" language rule, I've a hilarious story.

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I have no idea why, but women in this area LOVE to flirt with men that have children in tow.

A man caring for his children says, "I'm not a hipster, because I actually committed to something."

Another thing that Seattle women can't get enough of is asking them about themselves instead of drowning them in a deluge of personal anecdotes and opinions.

"Hi, I'm Karen, I just graduated from the University of Realness."

"Oh nice, sweet, rad! my friend Scott went there, well actually I visited him last week, I mean I'm sort of into a few different projects and one of them takes me up there. I experiment with a lot of music, you know, various sounds. But I went to University (isn't it funny how I noticed that people from other countries say 'University' instead of 'the university'?) So I like this area a lot, yeah."

I know this is normal for most readers, but really, in Seattle/Portland certain things are in short supply.

I think this had almost 0% to do with it. It is nothing uncommon to anywhere I have lived and revolves around number of things.

Oh and hipsters have kids too, often many and use them as effectively as accouterment as anything else they own.

I'd love to hear you theories on why women hit on fathers. I really don't understand it. Single men should be pounding down my door to babysit based upon the number of women that hit on my husband *in front of me.* Those kids weren't exactly immaculate conceptions

Enjoy supporting google's further invasion of privacy and their bloatware.

They are the new and worse MS.

Bloatware to push overblown hardware.

Except rather than just getting your money like MS was kind enough to do, they want every data point possible about you.

MS, Apple, BB, feature phones are ways to opt out of this. I've slowly been migrating away from google period.

its going to be every company soon enough. goverment is already tapping into our privacy as it is, so its moot.

look heres why i want the nexus 4 and it has not political reasons.

at $350 dollars unlocked no contract is an extremely great price for a phone that is new.

smartphones are expensive, they always have been. a high end smartphone retails at 550-650, even higher for the samsung s4. between all the makers, it is very competitive. that price is also backed when used on the second market, ebay and craigslist.

all most folks see is a $199 subsidized upgrade for a new phone. but what folks dont see is the 400 dollars extra built in monthly installments on their plan. its about 20 dollars a month extra.

the Nexus 4 is a true anomaly in all this. google sells the 16gb model for 350 on the play store, which honeslty, is $200 shy of what the device would cost ($550) if sold by lg directly. which, by the way, is exactly what the nearly-hardware-identical lg optimus g does cost.

the nexus 4 is so cheap because google is subsidizing the cost for you. how they are doing this, i have no idea, but it is freaking incredible deal.

they are seriously low balling the phone.

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“There is your brother, naked, crying, and you stand there confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.”